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Early in my life with Farwell, I crushed his glasses beneath my heavy climbing boots. (And no, he wasn't wearing them at the time.) Luckily, the tempered‑glass lenses survived, and I managed to twist the frames back into a semblance of their former shape. Farwell wears them to this day. But the experience reminded me just how important glasses are to anyone with less than perfect vision.

Until recently, this didn't include me. I was long blessed with better than 20/20 uncorrected vision in both eyes, and I could decipher the smallest print with ease. But the years have taken their toll at last, and a pair of reading glasses has become my constant companion. I even wore them to type the words you see before you. Nor can I escape my new dependency by lighting out for the territories. It doesn't matter if I'm following a route on a map, reading the display on a GPS or digital camera, adjusting the mech (derailleur) on my bike, or just checking the cooking instructions on a packaged entrée — I now need glasses to do all these things, and many more besides. Of course, I'm not alone, as the letters I received around an earlier article on eyewear made abundantly clear.

And what my correspondents had to say was as interesting as it was valuable. So I'm taking this opportunity to pass it along. After all, …

I used the twine because that was what I had on hand at the time, but dental floss would have worked equally well. As for using a pinhole to replace a broken lens, however, I'm a bit less sanguine. While it's true that a "pinhole occluder" — an opaque disk pierced by many small (≈1 mm) holes — will correct refractive error in the eye, it does this at a price: a much reduced field of vision and greatly diminished illumination. Still, if you've no alternative… But a spare pair of glasses would be a far better solution to the problem. (NB While we're on the subject of improvised eyewear, sailors and winter wanderers will find that opaque goggles with narrow slits make an acceptable alternative to sunglasses. If you break your glacier glasses high up on a snowy slope on a sunny winter day, or lose your last pair of sunglasses overboard in mid‑passage, that's worth remembering. Ultraviolet keratitis — aka "snow blindness" — is no fun.)

The bottom line? If you need glasses, always carry at least one spare pair. But as anyone who's bought prescription eyeglasses lately will know, they don't come cheap. That's why all my spare reading glasses were purchased at a local dollar store. (My mainstay pair are proper prescription eyeglasses from a dispensing optician. And yes, there is a noticeable difference in quality.) Sad to say, however, this …

Getting back to sweat for a minute, form‑fitting frames do a good job of blocking incident light from the sides, but they're often fog‑prone. A wide selection of creams and drops are offered for sale in the catalogs, each one claiming to banish fogging forever. I wish I'd found one that works for me. You may have better luck. If not, you'll probably need to leave your close‑fitting frames behind anytime you're headed into the tropics (or the arctic).

Not a very encouraging summary, is it? But it seems I've been a little short‑sighted, and veteran In the Same Boat reader Mona took the time to set me straight. Here's what she had to say:

I'm getting ready (I hope) to get my kayak into the water this season. I was reading the articles in the In the Same Boat Archive when I came across this, which you wrote in 2005. In it you referred to products that supposedly prevent clouding of lenses and your experience with their failure.

As a scuba diver I can attest that the defogging products designed to prevent face masks clouding up at depth are very effective. It never occurred to me before to try one of them to prevent summer fogging, but I'll test mine as soon as I can dig it out of the dive bag. (I bet it's buried down at the bottom.) There are myriads of these products on the market. A Google search would no doubt provide many options, and your local dive shop would have at least one brand to try.

In addition, please let me share a secret with you that until now only divers have known: We had a product that worked perfectly fine before defogger was sold in tiny bottles. It was clear gel toothpaste. That's right, any gel toothpaste, rubbed over the glass inside our masks and rinsed, left a thin layer of protection and prevented fogging. It's cheaper than defogger, too. Some divers still rely on toothpaste. Any flavour or brand works as long as it's gel. I used Close‑up brand. Perhaps Farwell will find some of this information helpful.

What can I add? Besides my heartfelt appreciation, that is. Thanks to Mona, my search for a defogger that lives up to the name is at an end.

And now for a tip of my own. It concerns a tool I first learned about during my days as a field geologist. I was occasionally caught short without a hand lens just when I needed a closer view of a map or specimen than I could get with my unaided eyes. That's when I reached for my …

As you can see, it won't replace your Hastings triplet, but it will make it easier to decipher the minuscule symbols on topos and marine charts. And it couldn't be much handier. In fact, now that I've found the Pocketlens for sale at Campmor, I think I'll get a couple of spares. Just in case. You could call it being prepared.

Whether you're at your desk or on holiday, it's hard to keep your focus if your vision isn't up to par. And good vision is doubly important to paddlers and other backcountry wanderers. (If you have any doubts on this score, Farwell can tell you about the day he mistook a bear for a dog.) I've written about peripatetic eyewear before, but it's a big subject, and I certainly didn't cover it all. Happily, though, some knowledgeable readers have helped me fill in the gaps, adding their own insights on eyewear. So here's looking at you, folks!